Animal Spirits Podcast - Wait, Are We in a Recession??? (EP. 440)

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

On episode 440 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠�...�⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss stocks moving on no news, reasons today's market is not like the 90s, the Fed needs to cut, Google's breakout, thoughts on Disney, Cembalest's favorite movies, and much more. This episode is sponsored by Invesco & KraneShares Visit  https://www.invesco.com/ to learn more. Invesco. Let’s rethink possibility. To learn more about KraneShares’ KOID ETF visit, https://kraneshares.com/etf/koid/?adsource=compound Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠animalspirits@thecompoundnews.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's show is brought to you by Invesco. The outlook for the U.S. economy? Unclear. But investors still see growth potential. Investco offers strategies designed to help you stay invested and target growth in any market. Whether you're looking for an equal-weight approach or mid-cap exposure that can balance growth and stability, Invesco offers funds designed to help you break your concentration. Want to fine-tune your approach?
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Starting point is 00:01:58 and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Ben is a trooper coming to you live from Orlando, Florida. It is 8.50 of the morning on Tuesday, Eastern Time. God, where is your family? I just wanted a break from my family for a little bit. Don't tell
Starting point is 00:02:39 them that. No, they went to some breakfast. And so we're at day three at Disney here. I'll give a lot. I've got more Disney thoughts later, but we did Waterpark, Hollywood Studios yesterday. Today's Epcot. And Epcot is, you don't need the whole day. So we're going to get there late mid-morning. Okay. Where's the water park? Typhoon Magoon, right on Disney campus here. I think they got two of them. But you know, the great deal they give is that if you check in and your room's not ready, you get free passes to the water park.
Starting point is 00:03:06 That is good. That is good. I've got water park thoughts and Disney thoughts later in the show. I can't wait to hear about the people you see at Disney. Always look forward to those. All right. So I picked a really great time to go on record and say that the SP was going to 10,000, huh? Yeah, for the couple weeks there.
Starting point is 00:03:22 You said, all right, enough of this tiptoeing around this stuff. Let's do it. And then the market fell out of bed. I don't know. So talk about what happened in the market with the reversal last week that freaked everyone out for some reason. Well, all right. I respect markets. I don't worship at the altar of every move in the S&P 500.
Starting point is 00:03:45 But on a day like Thursday where you have this blowout report from Nvidia, just absolutely outstanding numbers. And this goes to a point that we've made over the years. million times. And it's not lip service. It's true. I'm not being cute when I say that even if you had the news ahead of time, you couldn't necessarily profit from it. In certain cases, you could. But generally, it's just, it's not that easy because you only know what's priced in after the fact. And Thursday was a great example of that. So, Invidi reported tech stocks were in a, were in a sell-off beforehand. Set-up was nice, a little bit of doubt going to earnings. And in the after hours, LOL, boom, smash.
Starting point is 00:04:31 InVITI was up 3% in the day. It was up another 60% I'm sorry, 6% in the after hours. It was looking to open at 195. And it did. And then it sold off throughout the day, took the market down with it. And to your point, Ben, there was really no news. Now, when the market tops on such good news after such an extended run, oftentimes looking back, that is how markets top.
Starting point is 00:05:00 It's not necessarily, they don't ring a bell, but when the market fails to go higher on really good news, you have to pay attention. You can't just sweep it under the rug and say, oh, well, this happens all the time. No, it doesn't. That was notable. Yeah, you're a big market behavior guy. Like, yeah, so here's this tweet from this bull theory, which I'm not familiar with, but I thought it was interesting.
Starting point is 00:05:18 So this is on Thursday. Today's market dump makes absolutely no sense. S&P wiped out $1.5 trillion in value from the high. Bitcoin dropped to 87,000. Crypto market is below $2.95 trillion. And the craziest part, there wasn't a single negative head by no policy surprise, no new recession warning, no tariffs or bad earnings. Even in video, which makes 8% of the entire S&P, posted a bullish earnings report yesterday,
Starting point is 00:05:38 and now the entire pump has been retraced. Nothing that explains a sell-off of this scale. And sometimes the easiest explanation is people are sitting on huge gains and just decided this is a great excuse to take some profits. Now, I also think Josh had a thing on CNBC where he said, This is just Citadel trading back and forth with Millennium. This is just Algo to Algo. And I think there's probably something to that where an Algo hit something and then it's all computer-driven.
Starting point is 00:06:04 So you can say behavior, but what if a lot of it is just this is a bunch of computers trading with computers? Yeah, I don't know if I buy that entirely. I think it's certainly part of it. There's no doubt about it. But the type of move that we saw was rare, is rare, when the S&P 500 gaps open by 1.5%. Luke Kawa did this chart for Sherwood. He said, when the S&P opens 1.5% higher only to close 1.5% lower, it's happened in the last 30 plus years, basically in Liberation Day and then 2008. Yeah, so it doesn't happen.
Starting point is 00:06:41 That's not a good thing. I mean, obviously, right? It's a scorching reversal. A lot of people were saying one of the gnarliest rug pulls in the history of, well, history, I don't know, just a gnarly rugpole. And it was. Now, I am equally as surprised that there was no follow-through selling on Friday and no follow-through selling on Monday. That's because computers have no memory. Yeah, that's fair. Now, all of this is very short-term stuff, granted. But after Thursday, I certainly would have expected follow-through on the downside. And we saw the opposite. A lot of buying.
Starting point is 00:07:18 Ryan has a stat. Ryan Dietrich showed that 444 stocks in the S&P 500. We're higher on Friday, which is the most since late May. And the Russell 2000 and the equal weight, S&P, are above Thursday's high. Just a really interesting, unusual, and humbling market. And I think what this tells you is there is a lot of uncertainty. I know you're there's always an uncertainty guy. But there's truly, when you have gyrations of this magnitude, there is really a lot of uncertainty about the future and sustainability of the AI, spend, all of that sort of stuff.
Starting point is 00:07:57 My feeling on the vibes is just that I think a lot of investors don't want to get into a melt-up bubble situation. I feel like we know what that entails, and investors don't want that. So I think the fact that we keep having these little slaps on the wrist, I think, is a good thing. Here's the feather in the cap for, like, there's no need to worry yet, okay? This is one data point, okay? Why isn't high yield selling off yet?
Starting point is 00:08:19 Why haven't the credit markets join these yet? So this is JNK is up 7% this year. The drawdown as of last week was 75 basis points for high yield. The junkies of the right of the credit spectrum. Now you could say, well, high yield isn't high yield anymore. Private credit is high yield. Maybe that would be like the counter, but it doesn't seem like the bond markets care yet. You're right on both fronts.
Starting point is 00:08:42 High yield spreads not blowing out is notable in a positive way. But also somebody would say, Ben, you're looking at the wrong spot. Look at Blue Owl. They're at the epicenter of all of this land. to the hyperscalers. Look at Oracle's bonds. Look at Oracle's CDS. Like, that's where the worry is. It's not, it's not these other places. Right. And the funny thing is, is that the fact that Oracle's already rolled over 40% should actually probably make you feel better, that like the market is trying to put a stop to some of this stuff. All right, I got a question for you.
Starting point is 00:09:09 So we've done this many times. The average peak to trough drought on a given year is 16% going back to 1928, right? Intry year high to an entry year low. The average is negative 16%, which probably about surprising people. Put your money where your mouth is in terms of people worrying. Will it be better or worse than that in 2026? Well, we have a worse. Worse. Worse drawdown in 2026 than average. You think worse for sure. I mean, for sure. I would say minus 180. Because it was because it was worse in 2025, 2022 and 2020 and of course better in 2023, 24. It seems like most people would say worse. I think most people are in that camp right now of, like, expectations have gone too far. This is, it's too much. I think you can't ever say everyone, but it sure seems like this is
Starting point is 00:10:00 consensus now, that this has gone too far. Yeah, I think, I think consensus says the markets are rightly on edge, are rightly paying attention to risk. And I love that. I'm not, I'm not cavalier about risk. It is possible that we look back at the day that Nvidia topped on really great news, and that was it. That was just, and there's nothing wrong with fundamentals, but five trillion this much earnings. It was just unsustainable. That's possible. And also, that would be healthier than a 30% blowoff top from here.
Starting point is 00:10:31 Yeah, because the reason why Ben and I keep talking about it's like, why are you guys such haters, we're not haters. We know what happens in meltups. Meltups are bad. Nobody should want that. Unless you think that you are going to get out at the tip top of the meltup, you should not be rooting for that. That is not healthy. there's economic risks in there, there's risk to your portfolio, slow and steady wins the race.
Starting point is 00:10:51 And I think that all of the reintroduction of risk and doubt is really what leads to sustainable bold markets. So I love it. So GMO had this piece out from Ben Anchor, and he said it's probably a bubble, but there's plenty else to invest in. And I think that's probably consensus too. I listened to a couple of Scott Galloway's podcast, the market one. He talked to Michael Semblist and asked off Demoderin.
Starting point is 00:11:13 Two pretty well-respected guys. And Demoderon was like a full-on bear. unlike I've ever heard. He was like, nothing can explain what's going on right now. The expectations have gone too far. He was saying, like, get out and find some cash, essentially. Semblist said, like, listen, there's a case for a 10 to 15% correction, which, again, is average. But his, I think his, would you say there's a 40% case? But his words were more concerning than his call for that to be a correction. So again, I think this is, I think everyone thinks this now. You can't just be a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian.
Starting point is 00:11:46 And to your point earlier, like, you have to respect the market with the understanding that the market is just all of us, and we can be stupid. So, of course, the market can get stupid. I just, every, this whole decade, the market has made everyone look foolish. Anytime you tried to, like, say, no, no, no, you'd get too cute. And the market didn't bottom here. It's going to keep going down. And there's no way that was the COVID low or inflation is going to take the market down and it's going to be your session. Anytime you've tried to do that, you've looked like an idiot.
Starting point is 00:12:13 Yeah. The market has been smarter than you. Always. That is the only thing that it's causing me hesitance to say, like, yes, everyone is right. This is, this is it. This is the dumbest thing. But so do you trust your head or your heart? You can play that game all day long, right?
Starting point is 00:12:26 Jump from your left foot to right foot and changing your mind. I think a contrarian call for 2026 and we are going to start to see outlooks for 20206 as we get in. We're in the season for that for sure. People have to like fill up Sunday December stuff before they get away for the holidays. So I think a contrarian call for 2026 is the S&P gains another 20%. I think a lot of people would find that contrarian, yes. Yeah. I mean, I think that's very much within the realm of possibility.
Starting point is 00:12:53 I would take those odds. Even give me plus 140. I'll take it. Couldn't we see the handoff from Nvidia to Google? And then everyone starts worrying about Google now? Like, right? Like, I don't know. Here's a good one from Chart Kid to Matt that kind of would make sense with this.
Starting point is 00:13:10 The P.E. has gone nowhere in 2025. So from the start of the year to now, still at 24.5 times. It's gone up a little bit, it's gone down, and it's back where it is because of earnings. All of the gain, the year-to-date has come from earnings growth, not multiple expansion.
Starting point is 00:13:25 Which is really unusual, and it goes to what we're talking about, the doubt. When you see margin expansion, which we've seen, when you see technological revolutions, which we've seen, and it translates into earnings growth
Starting point is 00:13:35 with no multiple expansion, interesting. Pretty rare. I talked last week about how the 1990s level of euphoria is never coming back, And I found this article, I guess I wrote about it a while ago, it was from the New York Times and it was after the dot-com bubble. And a lot of these reporters were trying to do a post-mortem of like, how did we get so fooled
Starting point is 00:13:53 so badly? Why were we the cheerleaders? Wait, hold on. We skipped over a chart that just goes to the point that frames this conversation. Look at this chart from Bespoke. The rolling five-year change of the NASDAQ 100. And look where it was in the late 90s compared to today. It reached almost a thousand percent.
Starting point is 00:14:14 And in the most recent period, it never really got above 200%. It is kind of funny because that period in the 90s makes this chart hard to read almost. It makes it hard to discern between the period, but you're right. So the five-year change was much higher in... It was 5X? No, but I'm saying even in 2021, 2022, it was a better looking period. But that's because you had the 22 washout, I guess, as part of this. Yes.
Starting point is 00:14:39 But that's fair. Anyway, I don't need to read this whole thing, but this journalist in after the dot-com bubble was saying that we got addicted to the good news and it's kind of like we're never going to let that happen again and it does seem like that 1990s level of euphoria
Starting point is 00:14:55 is something that is probably never coming back because there's so many other outlets for contrarianism today which maybe is healthy I guess is it fair that we have so many different forms of opinions today and people have ways of pushing those opinions on others
Starting point is 00:15:11 that it actually I don't know. No, you're right. So we talk a lot about how the media shapes the narrative. Right. And the media is more likely to deliver bad news because that and Derek Thompson's been all of this. I'm not like blaming the media. The media is in the business of generating money, just like we all are, right? Everybody is in the business of making money. That's everybody's business. If you want to blame anyone, you blame the people who keep reading the negative stuff. Word to blame, not the media. They're giving us what we want. That's exactly right. So if the people weren't clicking and reading the articles
Starting point is 00:15:46 that are being served up that have a negative bias, then they wouldn't be giving it to us. If we wanted good news, guess what we would get? We would get positive news. That's not what we want. It's not fun. It's boring. Nobody cares.
Starting point is 00:16:00 So you're 100% right. That environment of cheerleading will never, ever, ever come back. All right. So here's one other difference between the previous bubble periods. And almost every bubble you read in history, it'll say like the first pinprick was raising interest rates, right? And it's funny because that didn't do it this time. That gave us a little bear market, but the Fed is cutting now.
Starting point is 00:16:20 And Neil Duda from Renmac put a pen to piece for Bloomberg, basically pounding the table, saying like the economic outlook, like we need not only a cut in December, we need to signal additional easing in 2026. The Fed knows, this is like his Jim Kramer moment. The Fed knows nothing, right? He did this and said, we need to cut. The labor market is slowing down. We don't have any government data rate.
Starting point is 00:16:41 now. And maybe that's one of the reasons that it's hard to know what's going on because they, I guess they said yesterday, like, we're not going to have third quarter GDP. We're not going to know. I don't know when it's going to come out. But the fact that we don't have a lot of data to go on right now would almost make it seem like more likely the Fed probably should be cutting more. Does it seem obvious that the Fed's going to be late here? But this is the thing. Again, the Fed is cutting rates into this. They're not raising rates into it. Right. You mentioned the top show, we both did that, like, there was really not a lot of news on Thursday that sent the market lower. It's not exactly true. We did get a job report. So Matthew B. on Twitter wrote,
Starting point is 00:17:20 today's jobs report for September shows U.S. private sector employment has declined in each of the last five months outside of the health care and social assistance and leisure and hospitality sectors an occurrence that's never happened in the past 35 years outside of recessions. So, wait, are we in a recession? Or is this just one of those data points that, hey, things that have never happened before happen all the time? I don't want to poo-poo the labor market stuff because it's obviously slowing. But isn't also true that we got to like 3.6% unemployment and the labor market couldn't
Starting point is 00:17:58 possibly get any better from there? Like, that was as good as it's going to get. I think that's the hard part to wrap your head around. Is this things normalizing companies overhired? Companies had too many job openings. The 2021 labor market was the hottest one we're ever going to see in our lifetimes, and things are going to normalize. Or, no, things are falling off a cliff.
Starting point is 00:18:18 This is a recession. That's the hard two paths. All right. I don't want to be laborer these points about, like, are people doing better than they think or not? I just kind of want to bring this back to because every time we talk about this stuff, The last couple weeks we talked about the K-shaped economy stuff. We get a lot of hate mail and comments from people who get really mad that, no, you guys are idiots. You don't see what's really going on.
Starting point is 00:18:39 Someone posted this chart from Vox this week, saying that the median net worth of Americans under 35 was the highest on record in 2022. And then I thought Mike Bird had a really good follow-up to this. He said, I increasingly feel, and he's from the economist, increasingly feel that the divergence between the widespread perception of economic performance and the actual reality, especially among Gen Z, is going to be an absolute nightmare in the years to come, total social poise. I think, ding, ding. We've, yes, we've lost the ability to, because in the past, no one had this data to look at. We never talked about data like this in the past.
Starting point is 00:19:11 No one ever even thought about it. So I understand if people's perception of our take on the K-shaped economy can sound insensitive coming to from two finance dudes who aren't in the lower K, I get that. I don't think our point. In fact, my point is definitely not that a K exists. I think that is conclusive, right? Everybody understands that there are people with assets and people without. Yeah, of course. My point is I don't like how it is causing such toxic political outcomes and arguments
Starting point is 00:19:49 because people are acting as if the lower K is 90% of the population. And that's my point. Like that part is just not true. It's not like everybody is getting crushed. again, being sympathetic to the ones that are, the way that the narrative is being framed is that there is the top 5% in everybody else, and it's tearing apart the fabric of our society. Like, that's the part that I reject. Right.
Starting point is 00:20:13 Yes. And I have some thoughts to tie it into Disney as well, but it's hard to have nuance on this topic and say, like, yes, we understand people are being left behind. Inflation has hurt a lot of people. And also, there's more people doing well than you think right now. That's hard for people to recognize. And again, the fact that we have this data now, and you can look at it, you show a chart like this to someone and they go, F you, no, look at my experience, my lived experience. Because, again, we didn't have this social media thing in the past where people could look at this stuff and dissect every little minute detail in every piece of data to show, no, actually, I'm doing better than you thought, or I'm doing worse than you thought, or this group was doing better, or this group was doing worse.
Starting point is 00:20:51 We didn't have that in the past. We never hadn't. People didn't argue about this stuff as much. Yeah. So, yeah, this, I agree with Mike. this stuff is not going to all of a sudden get better. Like, oh, okay, we got to figure it out. It's just going to get worse. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:05 I guess we just have to get used to it. Yep. I think that's about right. And also, no one's having their mind changed. Except like five people. All right. Let's talk about the middle class buckling under AI. Or what is this article?
Starting point is 00:21:19 Inflation. The middle class is buckling under almost five years of persistent inflation. It's interesting because I feel like there is a group of people who held out whether they were delusional or they just didn't understand it, like they thought that some of these prices are really going back. So this says after five years of high prices, many middle class earners thought life would be more affordable by now. Costs for goods and services are 25% above where they were in 2020.
Starting point is 00:21:43 Even though inflation rate is below its recent 2020 high, certain essentials like coffee, ground beef and car repairs are up marketably this year. And then they interviewed a bunch of people, of course, like the Wall Street Journal does, they have these stories, then they put the personal anecdotes in. And that's what makes it hard to refute. Like, how can you refute what this person is saying? But they said, I think Trump has a hard nut to crack bringing all this stuff down. And it was one of the Trump voters who said, like, I thought he was going to bring prices down.
Starting point is 00:22:03 And I don't think it's going to. I look at the inflation rate, and it says, like, we've had five years. It says this. We've had five years of high prices. But if you look at it, the high price thing, yes, of course, because we never draw back unless you have a period of, like, crippling deflation. If you look at the actual U.S. inflation rate, the amount of times that it was above average, like, and I, 3% is average. Okay, the long, 100 years, the average inflation rate is 3%. We were above the average from April 2021 to May 20203, and now we're back to average essentially, right?
Starting point is 00:22:39 We're at 3%. You want to know why I think this has been so painful for people? Because we didn't have a recession. As weird as that sounds. Every other time inflation has been that high, it's been brought down only through a recession. And that usually takes it down even further, right? inflation goes way lower or you get a period of short deflation. So it's almost like the fact that we didn't have a recession here almost made it more painful
Starting point is 00:23:05 for certain people. Does that make sense? Or that two galaxy brain? I hear what you're saying. I think the reason what we learned is that high prices just are the bane of all of our existence collectively. And the inflation rate, I know you know this, the inflation rate doesn't matter. If you look at cumulative inflation on a rolling, say, five-year period, prices are up so much. And you just, when you shove 15 years' worth of price gains or prices into a short window of time, it takes so long, it takes so long for the rabbit to go through the Python in terms of us getting used to it.
Starting point is 00:23:47 I'm sure everybody listening, like, are you just used to $18, I mean, it's, I guess I am used to it at this point, but it still feels crazy. A $23 salad with chicken still feels shitty and I can afford it. But it just, it feels awful. And for most people that don't have a financial cushion, it's just like, it's backbreaking. How is it salad with chicken $24? Whatever it is. It's nuts. There are no counterfactuals, but if you look at the actual amount of money we spent, and I don't know what the estimates are $7 trillion or whatever, the numbers are all over the place, depending on what you put into the pile. The fact that we had above average inflation for two years, essentially, I think this could
Starting point is 00:24:27 have been way, way worse. And I think we're actually lucky that it wasn't worse than it is because of all the supply chain. Like, I feel like we actually weathered the storm. Like, I feel like corporations weathered the storm so well that I honestly feel this could have been 10 times worse. Like with all the money we spent, it could have been way more chaotic than this. And I think you could have got into like a 1970s situation because that, I don't know how people actually survived the 70s. I know people hated it. If you go back and read and I wrote a whole
Starting point is 00:24:54 chapter about the 70s inflation in my book, and people did absolutely hate it. But there wasn't as much of a microphone to, like, if that situation happened now. Yes. If the 1970s situation happened now, there would be like, there would be a civil war. It's possible. Like, not to make light of it, but if that happened today, there was 15% inflation. Yeah. But the whole idea of, and some people will kind of quibble with, what's the difference between 2% inflation and 3% for the Fed, right, as their goal? I think you can basically take off 2% inflation because nothing is going to stop the train from government spending. The government is not slowing down spending. So I think you have to get used to this 3% world where for probably 15 years we
Starting point is 00:25:36 were in a 2% world. And that doesn't seem like very much, but over the course of five years, that adds up. I think that's kind of the world we're in. Okay, we mentioned this before. Google is absolutely on fire. Mark Beniof, who is the same. CEO of Salesforce tweeted this. I think he, someone made the point on, I'm stealing this and I can't remember who exactly made this point. I guess Mark Benihoff tweeted this. He said, holy shit, I've you chat TPT every day for three years. Just spent two hours on Gemini 3. I'm not going back. The leap is insane. Reasoning speed, images, video, everything is sharper and faster. It feels like the world just changed. And I guess someone made the point that Google gained more in market
Starting point is 00:26:10 cap from this tweet than Salesforce is worth, like 250 billion. It was like he spent his whole his whole career creating $220 billion worth of shareholder value for Salesforce, but then a 30-second tweet created more value for Google. Anyway, Google is on fire. They're crushing. And if you look at the chart of Google versus the NASDAQ 100, it's really since this summer. It essentially tracked over the last five years. It tracked the NASDAQ 100 pretty closely. And then since July took off like an absolute rocket ship. You know how sometimes you're in the right place at the right time, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with Google. So I remember very, very distinctly, I don't care to go back and find the episode because it doesn't really matter. But Josh and I were
Starting point is 00:26:53 arguing about Google's future versus chat gbt. And I was on the side that like, I just don't think that people are all, all people are going to just switch from Google to chat gbt. You're talking about 15 years of behavior. Like people still have hot mail emails. Like the inertia is real. And that was my thesis. I saw the Yahoo, a little Yahoo email. Right. And so, and so I bought Google earlier, was it last year? When it was like really getting down in the dump set, Chad GPT was going to eat its lunch. I bought the stock because I didn't believe the story was going to play out. And then I had CNBC on, which I almost never do. I just happened to have it on. Josh was on halftime and there was a call in where there was like a
Starting point is 00:27:35 memo about chatGB taking subscriber numbers from Google. And the stock was down 8%. And I was like even on the trade. And I was like, yeah, this is just going to be like a permanent, permanent black cloud in the stock. I just, I don't need to get, I don't need to die in this hill. But literally, like, had I, had I not been watching TV and had I just been like doing work or whatever and just like missed it? Because of the stock rebounded pretty fast, I wouldn't have sold. So sometimes you're the right place at the right times and sometimes you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was like a two to three period. People were honestly having this existential discussion about Google being like, is this, is this it for Google? And a lot of
Starting point is 00:28:10 people are taking victory laps now. Like, I knew it. I knew it. I'm glad that you said you sold because I feel like a lot of people at the time, there was way more people saying like Google is cooked, right? But I think this is the thing with AI is that, okay, first it was open AI as the winner. Then Nvidia is the winner. Then no, wait, Oracle is the winner for a second. Then it's, now it's Google. Isn't this just the musical chairs thing we're going to play? And then it was Microsoft for a while and aren't they all going to be like considered the winner? Aren't they all going to have their window, their 15 minutes of you being the winner? Like, aren't we setting up for a year now people going, actually, Google is kind of screwed now. Wait, they're going to, they're not as good.
Starting point is 00:28:41 And I feel like everyone has their day in the sun. And this is why I, I've been saying since the beginning, the best way to invest in AI, if you really want to do it is just only, NADSEC 100. It's the NASDAQ 100. It's the NASDAQ 100. Like, who's going to pick the winners in this thing? Right. Yeah, that's a good point. I don't, I don't, I think it's too hard. Okay, we talked last week maybe about how the sports books sometimes will cut people off if they're too good. And we get a bunch of, I got a bunch of messages on this. Someone says, listen to your betting, taking animal spirits. I'm one of the guys who has been thrown out of all the sports books in New Jersey. They don't let anyone bet who wins and my limits are dropped basically to
Starting point is 00:29:19 nothing. Good times. He sent me some screenshots saying that like he tried to put in like a hundred dollar bet and they'd bring it down like $5. And I got a messages from a few other people like this. And I guess that just shows how- Yeah, we got a bunch of the inbox. It's so, it's such bullshit. It just shows, I guess, how big the spreads are on people who aren't good gamblers. And I guess I understand it, like people who go to Vegas and count cards in their head, even if they're not technically cheating, they kind of suss them out and figure it out. I guess that's just the game. But I don't know.
Starting point is 00:29:49 Let's talk about crypto. I think last week you said, like, what's the catalyst now for Bitcoin? Something along those lines, right? And I do feel like crypto, unlike any other athlete, especially Bitcoin, is when it's going higher and it's moving higher, the feeling of nothing can stop this is really. really strong. And then when it's going down, it honestly feels like it's going to zero. Like this is, I feel
Starting point is 00:30:12 like more than any other asset class, crypto is and obviously the people would say, well, the reason is because it doesn't have any fundamentals and it's just all the greater fool or whatever, and there's nothing backing it. And I think that's kind of the thing. I tweeted this out and I can't, there are so many people
Starting point is 00:30:28 who still really, really, really hate crypto. I can't believe how many people said like, this is all still a Ponzi scheme. This is, it's because it's backed by nothing, it's all faith, and it's greater fool, and people hate this still. I think people in their memory, SBF is still there, but bigger than that, the early promoters were such assholes. Not all of them, obviously.
Starting point is 00:30:50 Yeah, there's a lot of scumbags. But have fun staying poor was on the cover of the New York Times. Now, I guess the kind of point would be, listen, it's a new revolution and there's always maniacs at the early stage frontier, and you need to have those loud voices to bring into the mainstream. Fine, I'll stipulate that. But I think there's a lot of that. Just like, just people are just dying for those people to go away and lose all their money.
Starting point is 00:31:11 So I totally understand that mentality. And I also understand the mentality of like this most recent time. So every time that crypto has crashed previously, and I would call this like a mini crash, like 30% is not nothing, but it's not 60%. Wait, what did it? Didn't it fall 3540? It went from... So I guess 126 was the high.
Starting point is 00:31:31 I got close to 80. I guess that's 30. Well, more than 30. So, but anyway, the point is this, every other time that crypto had fallen 30% and more, I bought, like, handily. This time I didn't. And in fact, this time, to your point, like, I almost thought about should I sell a little bit more? Because it is this weird thing where, and this exists in all momentum, like all momentum stories, but especially with crypto. Yes.
Starting point is 00:31:58 I just, the feeling seems stronger. So here's the thing, like, the thing about crypto over the years is that every time it's had a narrative of it's this thing. and that narrative has been disproven or just the exception to the rule a new narrative form but I think this year so if you look at gold versus Bitcoin I think this is a real black eye for Bitcoin
Starting point is 00:32:17 because everyone keeps saying all the macro people if you want us on smart and macro you say this is a debasement trade right and the reason gold's up almost 60% is because this is a debasement trade and I just I feel like the fact that crypto has gotten crushed
Starting point is 00:32:29 what gold has done well I thought the whole digital gold thing was such a good that's one that made the most sense to me. And the fact that it's kind of been disproven this year, and you may say, hey, listen, this is one time. We'll see what happens next time. Can I be honest? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:43 I don't know what the, I'm going to ask chat TBT. I think I know what is the debasement trade? Is this a dollar thing? Yes, it's just like we're debasing the dollar. So the debasement trade is shorthand for an investment thesis built around the idea that Fiat currencies will lose purchasing power, either
Starting point is 00:33:01 slowly through steady inflation or rapidly through policy-driven dilution of the monetary base. All right, okay, that's what I thought it was, I suppose. Yeah, the government, again, the government won't stop spending and... But the dollar is, like, doing fine, so I don't understand. Is there... What am I missing? It's kind of like, I think it's more like a deficit kind of thing.
Starting point is 00:33:17 You should ask more than pies last week. That was a good episode about it. But I think that is a black eye, but does it matter? So here's the thing. So it's kind of crazy. I wrote why I'm selling some Bitcoin, and we talked about it here on the show a year ago. It was basically a year ago because it was around Thanksgiving.
Starting point is 00:33:30 It got to 100, and I sold half of... I think I sold 25% at $19. and 25% at 110. And I got out of a half of my Bitcoin. And if you would have asked me back then, what do you think the probability of Bitcoin being 150K a year from now or 80K a year from now?
Starting point is 00:33:48 I would have said 80% it'll be 150. Like I'm kind of, I'm shocked that it's where it is. You're not shocked. You're surprised. Here's the thing. You shocked?
Starting point is 00:34:00 We put, like, ask, put some truth serum into the crypto people. You put a president who's literally, pumping crypto. You got these ETFs. You got all everything in your favor. And Bitcoin still crashed. And a lot of people were saying, listen, all the ETF flows are going to take the volatility out of it. And obviously that's been proven false. Like, you literally have someone in the White House who's pumping crypto and saying, like, I'm the crypto president. We're going like deregulate everything. Crypto is here to stay. And it still crashed. That to me,
Starting point is 00:34:29 I'm kind of, I'm very surprised. So I'm looking at my Robin Hood account to see when I sold. I sold like a quarter, I think I sold like a quarter of my portfolio, maybe a third, I'm not exactly sure, at 121,000. You top ticked it pretty good. Not bad. You did better than me. Now, in fairness, a lot of that, if I wasn't buying my house, I probably wouldn't have sold.
Starting point is 00:34:51 So a little bit of credit, a little bit of timing luck with, as it is, with most things. You turn digital assets into physical assets. Well done. But I'm very happy. I was very happy to see that this announcement on Roberted yesterday, as in New York resident, you can now send and receive eligible crypto. So I went on yesterday. I opened the app.
Starting point is 00:35:12 I hit send crypto. I opened my Fidelity Crypto account. There's a QR code. You take a picture. Boom. It's so easy. It takes two seconds. I'm like, so I sent like a hundred bucks just to test, make sure it works.
Starting point is 00:35:24 Like, this is awesome. This is so, could not be easier. And then I learned you can only send $5,000 a day. Oh, okay. So it'll take a while. But at least you can do it, I guess. Is that just a New York thing, or is that a Robin Hood thing? That's a good question.
Starting point is 00:35:40 The limit. Okay. Good question. But yeah, no, I was, I am surprised at Bitcoin's, uh, Bitcoin's price action. Hang on, having said all of this, you said, I, this time I'm not buying, um, for the first time I really stepped in and this week, I started buying more. I thought about, I thought about buying an 80, but I just didn't put the trigger. When it got to like 82, I started, like, I don't want to, I, every time this has happened
Starting point is 00:36:01 in the past, hey, yeah, throw up my feet. face when it hits 50 or something, but I, so again, I sold half of it. It's kind of been sitting in cash. I, and I started buying more. If it gets creamed again, like if it rolls over to whatever, below 80, 75, I'll buy. I will buy. But this is another one of those things where there wasn't a catalyst. What was the catalyst for crypto selling off? There was nothing. There was no story. It was the, it was the tech sell off. Yeah. Let's talk real estate. We're going to talk about some charts here and stuff, but we interviewed Logan Motishami from the Housing Warrior, and he took a baseball bat to a bunch of the strongly held beliefs and narratives in real estate. He is not shy about sharing his opinions, and so I think that's going to come out Saturday, and it's really good stuff on first-time homebuyers and why don't we build more houses.
Starting point is 00:36:55 And I think there's some stuff in there that would maybe surprise some people, very good stuff. The big thing was, the narrative is real. Obviously, the housing unaffordability is paramount. It's critical. It's an emergency. We need to do something. Unfortunately, the data that we've been using to help drive the narrative even more than it already is, not that it needs any help, might be fake news. It's wrong.
Starting point is 00:37:19 Yes. The way that he explained the survey that they used to see are young people buying houses. Yeah. They send it out to 170,000 people, 6,000 people reply. How many of them are actually young people? And so all those things about the median age of the homebuyers 59 and the median age of the first time homebuyers 40, this is why we were early to being an anti-survey podcast. We nailed this thing, that people don't, people either lie to surveys or they don't take them anymore, especially young people. That's the thing.
Starting point is 00:37:45 Okay. So Redfinn show that there are more sellers than buyers. They say 37% more sellers than buyers. That's a huge thing. And the Logan went through this again, too, saying that like, these charts look scary. but then if you look at Redfin's own data, housing prices continue to rise. So it's not like this is actually causing anything. So you have to look at cause and effect with these things.
Starting point is 00:38:05 You can't just look at the charts and go, oh, my gosh, this means housing prices are going to crash. This is interesting. Another one from Mike Bird, he's hit twice this week from the economist. He said he wrote about demortgaging of America. I mean, if you would have told some of this in 2006, they would have thought you were lying. As it becomes increasingly difficult to buy a home, American mortgage debt is falling to a 25-year low relative to G. and a 60 plus year low relative to the value of housing itself. So he did this chart that shows, yeah, housing debt as a percentage of the economy
Starting point is 00:38:34 and as a percentage of total housing value has just crashed. And this is the whole thing of, you know, mortgage rates being lower and 40% of people not wanting their homes all right because baby boomers have lived in them for 30 years and paid them off. And so, again, if you would have told some of this in 2008 after the housing market just crashed and people are underwater, if you would have said no, in like 15 years, the whole thing, 20 years, this thing like debt and mortgage is going to be
Starting point is 00:38:58 as low as you can be. People would have thought, this must be Nirvana. This is the greatest housing market ever. What happened? And of course it's not. So I guess, careful you. But that's very shocking, is it not? Yeah, it's really good. You can't say mortgage debt is a problem. And this I think this may be more than any other
Starting point is 00:39:14 thing about why the consumers remain so resilient. I think this is part of it. The biggest expense in everyone's line item for 60% of the households has gotten, has stayed cheap over this past five years. So here's a quote from the CEO of TransUnion, which would know a thing or two about the state of the consumer from the transcript. The consumer has proven to be pretty resilient. The consumer is still employed with some real wage gains in a reasonable level of debt
Starting point is 00:39:40 of leverage and supporting the debt volumes that they've got with low and manageable delinquencies. So, so far, so good. Nobody wants to read this article. Hey, actually, things are okay. I would not click on that. No. Okay. Let's talk private markets real quick. I want to mention one thing before we get into some of these stories about private credit. And I feel like we've harped on a lot of the potentially upsetting things going on private credit and what's going to happen.
Starting point is 00:40:04 I just wanted to make this point that not many people talk about. The fact that everyone's looking for like the bad, the downside of private credit, right? How is this going to get investors? How is this going to blow up the AI trader? How is this going to, whatever? How is this going to wreak havoc on people's portfolios? the fact that these private credit loans are happening outside of the banking system
Starting point is 00:40:22 obviously maybe makes people worry a little more but the fact that it's not JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns or Lehman again or like the fact that it's happening outside of the banking system is a positive benefit. This is a good thing. Yeah, it's so funny you mention that
Starting point is 00:40:38 because if these were, if these loans were being made by depository institutions, that would be worrisome. but people say, but the fact that it's, that it's made in the shadow banking system, like, that's even worse. Great. I would rather have it not be made by depository institutions where, like, you know the government's going to have to come.
Starting point is 00:40:58 Now, if KKR and Apollo and Blue Owl will ask for a handout from a government, if these things do blow up, then I'll, then I'll be more concerned. But the fact that it's happening outside of depository institutions where these places are pretty well capitalized, they'll either let stuff go, they're used to that, or they'll shore it up with their own money. Like, I think that's a, that's a positive. that this is off the banking. If some of the loans go bad, which, guess what?
Starting point is 00:41:22 Some loans do go bad. Some bonds go bad. Then the equity holders of Blackstone will get hit. Very simple. Yes. Yes. That's the positive that we got out of 2008. Is that like these are called shadow banking, whatever, that's a good thing that
Starting point is 00:41:38 it's off the bank balance sheets. I think imbalance. Yeah, I agree. All right. This was interesting. I guess saying the quiet part out loud from the Washington, Journal. Private equities embrace. Here's a headline. Private equities embrace of the mass market alarms long-time investors. Pension managers worried that surging investment from wealthy individuals
Starting point is 00:41:55 could erode their returns. Now, I would say will erode their returns. All right, here's from the article. The flood of money from individual investors has become the most frequently voiced complaint about the private equity industry. An internal survey of 70 institutional private equity investment heads identified the growth of retail channel as the number one problem for alignment between investors and fund managers. Scott Ramzauer, the head of private equity funds at the teacher retirement system of Texas, which is a $221 billion pension system, said, quote, that the retail versus institutional conflict is top of mind for limited partners. He said, if we want to enact best practices and protect our own positions as institutional investors,
Starting point is 00:42:42 it's best to set precedent now. Wow. What does that mean? The funny thing is... Get off my lawn? Here's my positive spin on this. The fact that it's going to advisors and the wealth management channel, these stupid, and I call them stupid, these stupid institutional investors that have been paying $2.20 forever,
Starting point is 00:43:03 like the wealth channel is going to bring your fees down. So even if the gross returns are lower, on a net basis, they'll probably be about the same. Because the institutions just have always been willing to pay these ridiculously high fees. And so you could say, like, well, they're going to change these fund structures. It's going to be an interval and evergreen and that's going to lower returns because there's more money.
Starting point is 00:43:24 And I think you're also going to lower fees and it's probably going to be kind of a wash. There's a narrative out there that institutional investors are going to get the cream and the retail channel, the wealth channel is going to get the foam, just whatever's left over. What if it's the opposite? This person is saying like, hey, there's only so much good stuff to go around. And if our share classes are going to be different, but the investment underlying investments are going to be the same, then there's less for us by definition. So I kind of love it. Yeah, this is a good thing.
Starting point is 00:43:57 And guess what? Who's going to get more preferential treatment? The money that you're trying to bring in or the people who already have 40% allocated to you. We don't care about you. The new money always gets treated better. Yes, exactly. Wealth channel is going to be traded way better than these institutions. It's hilarious that they've kind of world.
Starting point is 00:44:12 All right. So somebody's setting this to us, Michael, this is hilarious. It's a JD Power, 2025 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study. And so at the bottom of the list, this is the bottom five, number one, number five from the bottom, Land Rover, number four from the bottom, Audi. Number three from the bottom, Jeep. Now, in my defense, I do have a shitty EV Jeep, but I wonder if, like, are the gas, what's wrong with the gas powered Grand Cherokee?
Starting point is 00:44:40 I had that I had no problems. There was a, we got a ton of emails from people saying, like, do not buy a Cherokee. People, I don't know, people just have very strong opinion. So everyone was trying to talk you into a Lexus. All right. So I keep going back and forth. I think I'm going to get to Lexus.
Starting point is 00:44:54 I think I'm going to get the GX. But I don't know. I haven't been inside. I haven't. You got bullied into it. I got bullied into it. But my mom drives one of those GX Lexus. She loves it.
Starting point is 00:45:05 The new ones? She got a used one. My parents are very cheap with cars. No, but like, is it like the new model? Because it looks new. Okay. No, it's the old one. Okay.
Starting point is 00:45:14 I don't know. So you're going to be a Lexus guy. All right. Everyone talked to you out of theater. I just feel like I should make it to December to remember, you know? Okay, you have to ask them if they'll put the big bow on it, though.
Starting point is 00:45:25 Right? The huge red bow. But my shitty Jeep, my lease is not up until April. Have your car broker figured out? What do you got that guy for? I still have a dent in my fender from hitting the pole.
Starting point is 00:45:38 That's just who I am. I don't care. I don't fix things. Not concerned. Especially those little vents like this. Someone nailed my car and, like, left it a big enough, like a three-inch dent in my door. That I would get fixed. I just, I don't care.
Starting point is 00:45:53 All right. I feel like you always hear nightmares scenarios. So I wanted to just share, like, a positive situation. Like, we've, and we've heard these of, like, 401K rollovers, like, going bad, like, the check getting stolen or lost, or it takes four weeks to get a check. My wife had a four or three with her prior employer. That for whatever, the fees were good enough and the provider was good enough where I didn't, even move it and I probably should have. I just left it in these index funds that it was in. And finally, I thought, you know what? I need to consolidate. I'm sick of having this account here
Starting point is 00:46:20 and that account here and this account here. So I rolled it over to Schwab, where I have all my accounts and I'm consolidating there. We use Schwab. And the 403 rollover was so, 403B rollover was so easy. I called the place. I gave the numbers. Four days later, the money hit the account and it was there. And they gave me, it was ridiculously easy. That's shocking. I couldn't believe. Right? I guess that says more about the system that it is shocking when that happens. But anyway, I guess it helps that. I also had Erica from Reholt's wealth tracking it like she does. She is the go. So, yeah, that helps. All right. Let's do some Disney talk. Here, there he is. You know, I have a great pick
Starting point is 00:47:04 with Disney. My son and I, all we wanted was a Pluto hat. You know the Pluto hat with the ears coming down? I love Pluto. And it was sold out everywhere. They didn't know one had it. How do you sell out of Pluto hats at Disney. So we had to get a Mickey hat. Okay. So, here's a few random Disney thoughts. We're halfway through our trip. I'm going to have more next week. There's no
Starting point is 00:47:25 recession here. And I wonder if, do anecdotes even matter anymore? Because it's so packed here. And the thing is, you make this point, like, is Disney full of millionaires, multi-millionaires? You look around to the people don't always judge a book by its cover.
Starting point is 00:47:41 Everyone at Disney is not wealthy. Okay? there was so much money to be spent. So you get these little bands. Wait, hold on. Can I just real quick? I'm the question, like, do anecdotes matter anymore? I was talking about this with Josh in the airport this week or last week when we were coming home. And it's just, it's packed.
Starting point is 00:47:58 And I said to Josh, I made the point like, hey, if there was a recession, if there is a recession, do you think we would know just by like living? Like, would we be like, huh, the airport feels way less busy than it used to be? The restaurants aren't busy. I don't know anymore. I don't know. But back to you. It's a good point. You're right.
Starting point is 00:48:14 If the unemployment rate goes from 4% to 6% and there's a recession, is consumer behavior going to change that much? I don't know. So, Disney is bumping. And it's a holiday week, so whatever. But it's, and it's not like any more packed than it has been in the past when we've been here. This is our third trip.
Starting point is 00:48:30 And I am, I'm liking it a little more every time. I still complain because it makes my wife angry. I like it a little more. But here's the thing I don't get. And I do not bemoan people who, people have different tastes and things that make them happy. the Disney adult thing is fascinating to me.
Starting point is 00:48:44 I think there should be a documentary in these people. I think there should be absolutely be a Christopher guest movie made. Best in Show is my favorite Christopher guest movie where he goes behind the scenes. Michael Antonelli is the guy. So we've run into these Disney adult people.
Starting point is 00:48:57 It's the first day where you're here, we're in the hot tub with my kids, and these two adults are talking about how great the parks is, and they're telling all the kids, and it's just like 40-year-old couple. And we went on the Star Wars ride yesterday. One of the Star Wars rides, you sit,
Starting point is 00:49:07 and you get the pick where you sit. You're a pilot or you're a gunner or you're an engineer. and you know how they're like hey we need two up here we need two and it's these two disney adults and they're like we can go but only if we're engineers we're not going to be pilots again they're okay stay back there and i'm just like these people fascinate me to no end the Disney adults i like they they have all the gear on they're they're they're the biggest smiles they have bigger smile than you know those people their hearts are pure yes yes exactly they're like
Starting point is 00:49:33 they're just they're happy people and like good for them that they just fascinate me to know and they can absolutely absolutely make a satire on these people as a movie I think that, and obviously this is wish casting, if the world was a fair place, Disney would offer discounts on beer to people with more kids. So if you have one kid, you have no discount. Two kids, you get like 10% off. If you have three or more kids,
Starting point is 00:49:56 you get like 40% off of your beers at Disney. Because here's the one person you see at every Disney line. And this was me and my wife yesterday too. When you're waiting in line and it's hot and people, and find the kid does something and they won't stop fighting and you go, stop it, stop it. Stop it! You know one of those?
Starting point is 00:50:14 Stop it! And you like grab an arm. Like, of course, I did that. But you see someone else do it and you go, like, I feel you. And like, so I feel like they should just like, if you see that happening, Disney should run in and be like, here, here's a bud light. Just relax. Like, have a beer, calm down.
Starting point is 00:50:31 One more. The first day I said, we went to the water park and in the wave pool. You know, like they make this big noise like, doon! And then the wave goes. And it's a huge wave, right? And everyone has the same collective sound when the wave starts. They go, and then afterwards, everyone pops up out of the water and goes, yeah, you know? Like, wait, but I, my kids, like, I couldn't get my son out of the wave pool.
Starting point is 00:50:59 He was in it for an hour. But, like, here's the thing. If you're a lifeguard at a wave pool, you know, they have the people way up high. Every time after the wave goes, they're running up and down to make sure, like, no bodies are floating in water or dead. Those people are 10 times underpaid. If I'm a teenager and I'm doing that, because I saw one time a kid was struggling and the left part had to jump in after them
Starting point is 00:51:19 and swim them because they couldn't tread water anymore. They're way underpaid. Finally, one more thing. Then I'm done with my Disney talk. We had an Uber driver to take us from... We stayed at a resort and we went to the Disney resort. We got here a day early because flights were all messed up. And this Uber driver was talking about how he is a private shaft.
Starting point is 00:51:39 So he's like, hey, if you rent a Disney vacation, vacation home, I'm a private chef. I can come cook for you. And as he's driving, he's pulling up all of his dishes on Instagram, right? And we're getting a little concerned because, like, eyes on the road body. But he's showing all my kids, like, his favorite dishes because I ask him questions. And it just kind of gives me faith in humanity that, like, I know people are worried about stuff right now, people worry about AI and people worried about young people. But as a species, we are hustlers. Like, this guy is driving Uber on the side. He's a private chef. He's telling us about how he has these other businesses he's trying to start. Like,
Starting point is 00:52:08 people are going to figure this out. right? I have faith in him. Yeah, I like that take. You know, we've figured this out for thousands of years. Like, anytime there's a worry, I feel like now people are like, this is the end. Like, I just don't hate that dure mentality. Yeah. Anyway, I'll met up Mortimerin Disney next week.
Starting point is 00:52:24 We're going to Epcot after this podcast is done. And my goal is I'm going to drink enough beers at Epcot where my wife has to make a comment. So that's the rest of my day. Okay. You're having another beer, really? That's, that's me today. Okay. All right.
Starting point is 00:52:38 Good stuff, Ben. All right, we'll skip the streaming stuff. You want to get the recommendations? Sure. Wait, one more random thing. We'll do recommendations. Someone DM'd me on Twitter and said, hey, I set up a dumpster rental business 10 years ago and left my job teaching during COVID. The fuel in the industry was a transformational aspect of Airbnb's.
Starting point is 00:52:58 Hopefully, being long dumpster rentals is the same right call. So you're saying, this business has been great. And I think that's a great long. There's got to be a company out there's got to be a picks and shovels company out there that does all the Dumpster rentals, right? For sure. You know the worst part about that? And I'm sure you're going through this
Starting point is 00:53:14 if you do some renovation on your new house. They put the dumpster in your driveway forever. And then it's really old and you get like rust, pools of rust going down your driveway. You know, because they're so old. Like, I want a better looking dumpster if I'm going to invest in this. One more thing.
Starting point is 00:53:31 On the topic. Are you guys an air fryer family? Oh, yeah. I feel like if you have kids, you have to use an air fryer. Yeah. I mean, it makes chicken nuggets in half the time, right? You know, like this, this Black Friday, buy an air fryer. I mean, there's, I think there's kind of a social media joke of people like love talking
Starting point is 00:53:49 off air friars. Okay, I'm sure there's a physics. Wait, oh, oh, speaking of Black Friday. So I've got on my Tommy John undershirt. Well, I bought one. I bought one. I bought one. So, okay, there's two types.
Starting point is 00:54:01 There's the cool cotton. And I think the other one is called the second skin, which is like a tighter fit, which I don't love. but so I bought more they're expensive they're they're like 35 or 40 bucks but I bought more there was 30% off and then I was talking to chris yesterday he told me he bought some they're they're not 50% off now for me I understand that $40 is a lot for an undershirt I get very uncomfortable generally when I sweat through a cotton I mean it's who's not who's not uncomfortable sweating so for $35 whatever it is like well worth it so the cool cotton
Starting point is 00:54:32 Tommy Johns are are fucking awesome okay I got to make sure change change my whole train travel. I just am comfortable, finally. Yeah, you do sweat. So it's okay to pay up for that. So here's my thing on airfriars. And I'm sure there's a physics component of this. Why don't we have giant air fryers instead of oven? We use our air fryer now way more than we use an oven. Why don't they just have a big air fry there where the oven goes? What even is an air fry? I just thought it was an oven. But why does it cook it so much faster than an oven? An oven, you have to preheat it. That takes forever. Like if we're heating up pizza versus the oven versus the air fryer, it's way faster in the
Starting point is 00:55:06 air fryer. Why don't we have a giant air fry in our house instead of a big oven? I don't know. Were air fryer some new technological breakthrough in the last five years? I don't understand. Where'd they come from? It sure seems like it, right? I don't get. All right. Let's do some recommendations. I'll go first. I started The Beast in me on Netflix with Clear Danes and Matthew Rye's, the guy from the Americans, which is one of the most underrated shows of the past 10 years or so. And this, the setup of this show could been like one of those awful Netflix shows like oh really it's like a there's a mystery like you know new guy moves in he's rich he's there's a murder but the fact that these two are in it
Starting point is 00:55:40 and they're such good actors the very first episode they have a lunch did you watch any of this yet not yet who's so obviously claire daines is one of the goats who's the other who's the other actor matthew rise i think his name is he's from the americans he's they have a lunch scene they have a lunch scene in the first episode and and it and it's kind of a Netflix show but their acting is so good they're on just a heater. It's like two people just so good at their craft going back and forth. It's really, really good. I'm into the show.
Starting point is 00:56:09 I'm going to watch. I just haven't started it yet. You talked me into the Eddie Murphy doc on Netflix, and I absolutely loved it. I thought it was fantastic. He has this great line in there because he's got like 10 kids. He's like, if you put your kids first, you'll never make a bad decision. And I thought like his outlook on the world was great. It was almost like, I think you could make the case at the height of his powers.
Starting point is 00:56:27 He's the funniest person of our lifetime. at 19, he was the star of S&L, he was a star of movies, and he was also the biggest comedian in the world. And I think he got kind of bored with being funny. And you could tell even in the doc, like, he could still turn it off if you wanted to, but he didn't, he didn't want to anymore. But that scene with the puppets at the end. Oh, gosh.
Starting point is 00:56:45 But here's the thing. I have, in terms of my most rewatched 80s movies, they were mostly USA movies. So coming to America was probably in my top five. Most rewatched 80s. I watched it all the time. Yeah. To this day, I feel like an idiot. I did not know Eddie Murphy was the white Jewish guy in the barbership.
Starting point is 00:56:58 I knew who was all the other guys. I had no idea. That was him. They showed him putting the makeup. I thought that was, okay, there's a random white Jewish guy and Eddie Murphy playing around him. I had no idea that was him. I can't believe I didn't know that all these years later. Wow.
Starting point is 00:57:11 So anyway, I did you like pause and rewind? No, I just, I couldn't believe it. But that part was so, but yeah, the whole, I feel like, yeah, I feel like there's probably three people at the height of their powers. Will Farrell, Chris Farley, and Eddie Murphy to me are probably the funniest people of my lifetime. But the difference is, like, those weren't great stand-up comedians as well. Like, he, there was... So after the doc, it recommended, do you want to watch Raw? So I put Raw, and I haven't seen in years.
Starting point is 00:57:37 It still holds up. A lot of that stuff that long ago is kind of like, and obviously some of this stuff, some of the words he used as a- Was Raw the one with the red leather or the purple? No, the purple leather. I thought Delirious was better, I think. Deliris is my favorite, but Raw, it's still, even though he says some stuff that you probably don't say today,
Starting point is 00:57:54 it still holds up and it made me laugh out loud, multiple times. It really holds up still. Finally, one more. On the way down here, I finally watched Wind River, which is a Taylor shared movie I'd never seen it before on Netflix. Good. It's really good. And I couldn't believe, all of a sudden, two-thirds into the movie, hey, here's John Bernthal. But I thought Jeremy Renner
Starting point is 00:58:14 was really good in that movie. And his movies are higher quality than his shows, like Wind River and Sicario, and like his, he should go back to making movies. Instead of 25 TV shows. Well, he will. He will. they uh paramount just signed it from for movies oh that's good okay yeah i wind river like very underrated i was yeah hell of a movie um i just started landman speaking of i love that show it's so much fun okay second season just came out right yeah um okay so uh the rewatchables is on such a heater at least
Starting point is 00:58:45 as far as my movie taste is concerned so four weeks ago they did the truman show then they did I wanted to rewatch that. I'm going to eventually. I love that movie. Then they did snake eyes, which I didn't realize that that was a department movie. My dad took me to see that in theater.
Starting point is 00:59:00 So I saw that in theater too and I was like, man, that movie stunk. Yeah, I didn't love it in real time. But in hindsight, it's great, obviously. Weird Science. There's another one of my 80s ones
Starting point is 00:59:11 that's way up on the USA list. I watched the same. Remember the Weird Science show on USA? With Vanessa, what was her name? Vanessa Angel, Engel? Yeah. I watched that show.
Starting point is 00:59:21 I did too. And last. just this morning, I was listening to Two for the Money, which I love that movie. Speaking of gambling. Okay. That one, to me, that's like an unintentional comedy, right? I remember that movie. Or McCona, he's like lifting weights the whole movie.
Starting point is 00:59:35 Yeah, I mean, it's ridiculous. Yeah. He's like a gambler on a heater. Yeah. No, he plays one of those guys like in like a gambling boiler room. Right. John Anthony, and then he gets his own show and, you know, you can imagine what happens. All right.
Starting point is 00:59:47 I am slogging through. I should say slog because it's not a slog, but it's just there's six episodes. It's Mr. Scorsese on Apple. Like, if you're a movie fan, and obviously, if you are, you like all, you love all of his movies for the most part. It's worth watching. There's, like, some of the behind-the-scenes stuff with... Are they each, like, an hour long? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:00:08 So it's long. But De Niro is all over it. There's one... I mean, the Irishman was three out and a half hours, so does it surprise you that his documentary is six hours? So they go into, and I'm only three episodes in, but they go pretty deep into the making of each of his movies. chronologically. So Mean Streets, which was, I think it's, which was, which was his first big movie with Keitel and De Niro. And it wasn't big at the time. I think it was like in 1970. I don't if anybody saw it in real time. De Niro plays, it's very much based on his life, like growing up
Starting point is 01:00:38 in the streets. De Niro plays a scumbat guy who is always, you know, borrowing money and not paying and just a, you know, a derpeg. And in the dock, they bring on camera, the guy who is based on in real life. And you could only imagine the character that this guy was. At this point, the guy's 80 years old, orange tan, bright white teeth. Anyway, it's good. It's, you know, if you're a movie person, it's on Apple? It's Marty. It's Marty, yes. Yeah, it's good. I'll probably watch it. That's good. It's worth watching. All righty. Wait, do you want to real quick, go through Michael Sembless movies here? Sure. I mean, you really don't want to go back to Disney.
Starting point is 01:01:18 It took too long to get my kids breakfast So I got time I just thought it was funny That he ranked his movies in the 21st century In the number one film is about Oh wait wait no no no That's not how he did it It goes by year
Starting point is 01:01:34 It goes by year Oh okay okay okay so he's a So why don't you start with momentum And then go in reverse Chronological order Okay can I just pull all the ones that I know Sure momentum Mahal and Drive Adaptation
Starting point is 01:01:48 which is a very good movie, Charlie Coffin one. Lost in Translation. Wait, Charlie Coffin, that's a Nicholas Cage? Yeah, Charlie Coffin wrote that movie. It's a good one. Where he plays twins, that's a very good movie. I love that movie. A history of violence.
Starting point is 01:02:01 I'm sorry, not a history of violence. All of both Vigo Morgensen. Eastern Promises is one of my all-time favorites. Horrifically demented movie. You've seen that one? Yes, there's a scene in there that's... Holy shit. The shower scene?
Starting point is 01:02:15 Okay. In Bruges. That's one of my favorites. And Bruges is good. He's got a good list here. I've never seen it inside Lewin Davis. That's a hard watch. So is the lobster.
Starting point is 01:02:27 So he's got some interesting ones in here. And then his latest one is the Ballad of Walls Island, which I recommended to my wife and said, you've got to watch this. And she watched it on a plane right down and said, I absolutely loved that movie. Well, I like that or is that not for me? No, total bad movie. That's not a much movie. Okay.
Starting point is 01:02:45 Okay, I'm sorry. I have seen Inside Lewin Davis. I don't like this movie. This is one with Oscar Isaac. This is not for me. This is a you movie. This is a film. But even I didn't care for it.
Starting point is 01:02:55 What I was think it was, I've never seen Walk Hard, the Dewey Cox story. Okay, neither of I. I've heard people who swear by that one. I've never seen any of John's really like. People like the movie. Anything else on here that you like? Yeah, he's, you guys. Oh, Eternal Sunshine.
Starting point is 01:03:10 You definitely like that movie. Yes, that's a great movie. Yes. The Last King of Scotland, I think is really good, too. I don't think I heard of that. I enjoyed that. Wait. No, no, no. I saw that. I saw that.
Starting point is 01:03:20 It was an E.Diamine. Yeah. All right. Okay. Good list. Ben list. Yep. All right.
Starting point is 01:03:27 So what happens now? You go meet your family where? They're at breakfast. They went to a breakfast, which is fine with me. I'm going to go meet them for breakfast. We're going to go Epcot. And my wife has everything planned out. One other thing I didn't mention about Disney that I meant to mention before.
Starting point is 01:03:41 Disney is the embodiment of the K-shaped economy. Okay? Because you can wait in line for. for two hours for a Disney ride, but if you pay for, I don't know what they're called anymore. There's a lightning pass and there's a premium pass and there's a fast pass. So my wife paid, I don't know, she figured this all out. God bless her, she did all the planning for this.
Starting point is 01:03:58 She's got it all figured out. I just, she keeps trying to talk me about the plans. And I'm like, just tell me where I need to be and when. But you can use these lightning lane passes to cut everyone in line. So we got them for a couple of the biggest rides yesterday, right? So my kids, we walk right up past all this line of people, right to the front of the line, get on the roller coaster, ride the roller coaster, My kids love roller coasters, which is great, because so do I.
Starting point is 01:04:20 But then we have to wait in line for the next ride, and they go, we have to wait. We can't just cut everyone. I'm like, listen, guys, but that is, you almost feel bad cutting by, it's like sitting in first class and everyone else and coaches walking by you. When you cut in front of everyone in line, just because you pay money, that's the K-shaped economy, right there. But guess what? All the people waiting in line, they're still having a great time. They're still enjoying themselves. They're on fun at Disney.
Starting point is 01:04:45 They're just waiting a little longer. That's the K-shaped economy. Some people cut in line. Some people have to wait in line. Okay. All right, we'll leave it there, Cutter. Enjoy the rest of your time at Disney. I can't wait to go.
Starting point is 01:04:58 I'm going in a month. So you'll tell me the latest attractions I've got to go see. All right. Thank you to Duncan and the entire production team. Thank you very much, everybody for listening. Have an incredibly happy Thanksgiving with your family. This is a great time of the year. This is far as not concerned.
Starting point is 01:05:12 Animal Spirits. And everyone watched planes, trans, and all the bills at least once. Have to watch it. Animal Spirits at thecompan News.com. We'll see you next time.

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